new york times building
Media June 24, 2019
NY Times admits it sends stories to US government for approval before
publication
The New York Times casually acknowledged that it sends major scoops to the US
government before publication, to make sure “national security officials” have
“no concerns.”
By Ben Norton
The New York Times has publicly acknowledged that it sends some of its stories
to the US government for approval from “national security officials” before
publication.
This confirms what veteran New York Times correspondents like James Risen have
said: The American newspaper of record regularly collaborates with the US
government, suppressing reporting that top officials don’t want made public.
On June 15, the Times reported that the US government is escalating its cyber
attacks on Russia’s power grid. According to the article, “the Trump
administration is using new authorities to deploy cybertools more
aggressively,” as part of a larger “digital Cold War between Washington and
Moscow.”
In response to the report, Donald Trump attacked the Times on Twitter, calling
the article “a virtual act of Treason.”
The New York Times PR office replied to Trump from its official Twitter
account, defending the story and noting that it had, in fact, been cleared with
the US government before being printed.
“Accusing the press of treason is dangerous,” the Times communications team
said. “We described the article to the government before publication.”
“As our story notes, President Trump’s own national security officials said
there were no concerns,” the Times added.
Indeed, the Times report on the escalating American cyber attacks against
Russia is attributed to “current and former [US] government officials.” The
scoop in fact came from these apparatchiks, not from a leak or the dogged
investigation of an intrepid reporter.
‘Real’ journalists get approval from ‘national security’ officials
The neoliberal self-declared “Resistance” jumped on Trump’s reckless accusation
of treason (the Democratic Coalition, which boasts, “We help run
#TheResistance,” responded by calling Trump “Putin’s puppet”). The rest of the
corporate media went wild.
But what was entirely overlooked was the most revealing thing in the New York
Times’ statement: The newspaper of record was essentially admitting that it has
a symbiotic relationship with the US government.
In fact, some prominent American pundits have gone so far as to insist that
this symbiotic relationship is precisely what makes someone a journalist.
In May, neoconservative Washington Post columnist Marc Thiessen — a former
speechwriter for President George W. Bush — declared that WikiLeaks publisher
and political prisoner Julian Assange is “not a journalist”; rather, he is a
“spy” who “deserves prison.” (Thiessen also once called Assange “the devil.”)
What was the Post columnist’s rationale for revoking Assange’s journalistic
credentials?
Unlike “reputable news organizations, Assange did not give the U.S. government
an opportunity to review the classified information WikiLeaks was planning to
release so they could raise national security objections,” Thiessen wrote. “So
responsible journalists have nothing to fear.”
In other words, this former US government speechwriter turned corporate media
pundit insists that collaborating with the government, and censoring your
reporting to protect so-called “national security,” is definitionally what
makes you a journalist.
This is the express ideology of the American commentariat.
NY Times editors ‘quite willing to cooperate with the government’
The symbiotic relationship between the US corporate media and the government
has been known for some time. American intelligence agencies play the press
like a musical instrument, using it it to selectively leak information at
opportune moments to push US soft power and advance Washington’s interests.
But rarely is this symbiotic relationship so casually and publicly acknowledged.
In 2018, former New York Times reporter James Risen published a 15,000-word
article in The Intercept providing further insight into how this unspoken
alliance operates.
Risen detailed how his editors had been “quite willing to cooperate with the
government.” In fact, a top CIA official even told Risen that his rule of thumb
for approving a covert operation was, “How will this look on the front page of
the New York Times?”
There is an “informal arrangement” between the state and the press, Risen
explained, where US government officials “regularly engaged in quiet
negotiations with the press to try to stop the publication of sensitive
national security stories.”
“At the time, I usually went along with these negotiations,” the former New
York Times reported said. He recalled an example of a story he was writing on
Afghanistan just prior to the September 11, 2001 attacks. Then-CIA Director
George Tenet called Risen personally and asked him to kill the story.
“He told me the disclosure would threaten the safety of the CIA officers in
Afghanistan,” Risen said. “I agreed.”
Risen said he later questioned whether or not this was the right decision. “If
I had reported the story before 9/11, the CIA would have been angry, but it
might have led to a public debate about whether the United States was doing
enough to capture or kill bin Laden,” he wrote. “That public debate might have
forced the CIA to take the effort to get bin Laden more seriously.”
This dilemma led Risen to reconsider responding to US government requests to
censor stories. “And that ultimately set me on a collision course with the
editors at the New York Times,” he said.
“After the 9/11 attacks, the Bush administration began asking the press to kill
stories more frequently,” Risen continued. “They did it so often that I became
convinced the administration was invoking national security to quash stories
that were merely politically embarrassing.”
In the lead-up to the Iraq War, Risen frequently “clashed” with Times editors
because he raised questions about the US government’s lies. But his stories
“stories raising questions about the intelligence, particularly the
administration’s claims of a link between Iraq and Al Qaeda, were being cut,
buried, or held out of the paper altogether.”
The Times’ executive editor Howell Raines “was believed by many at the paper to
prefer stories that supported the case for war,” Risen said.
In another anecdote, the former Times journalist recalled a scoop he had
uncovered on a botched CIA plot. The Bush administration got wind of it and
called him to the White House, where then-National Security Adviser Condoleezza
Rice ordered the Times to bury the story.
Risen said Rice told him “to forget about the story, destroy my notes, and
never make another phone call to discuss the matter with anyone.”
“The Bush administration was successfully convincing the press to hold or kill
national security stories,” Risen wrote. And the Barack Obama administration
subsequently accelerated the “war on the press.”
CIA media infiltration and manufacturing consent
In their renowned study of US media, “Manufacturing Consent: The Political
Economy of the Mass Media,” Edward S. Herman and Chomsky articulated a
“propaganda model,” showing how “the media serve, and propagandize on behalf
of, the powerful societal interests that control and finance them,” through
“the selection of right-thinking personnel and by the editors’ and working
journalists’ internalization of priorities and definitions of newsworthiness
that conform to the institution’s policy.”
But in some cases, the relationship between US intelligence agencies and the
corporate media is not just one of mere ideological policing, indirect
pressure, or friendship, but rather one of employment.
In the 1950s, the CIA launched a covert operation called Project Mockingbird,
in which it surveilled, influenced, and manipulated American journalists and
media coverage, explicitly in order to direct public opinion against the Soviet
Union, China, and the growing international communist movement.
Legendary journalist Carl Bernstein, a former Washington Post reporter who
helped uncover the Watergate scandal, published a major cover story for Rolling
Stone in 1977 titled “The CIA and the Media: How America’s Most Powerful News
Media Worked Hand in Glove with the Central Intelligence Agency and Why the
Church Committee Covered It Up.”
Bernstein obtained CIA documents that revealed that more than 400 American
journalists in the previous 25 years had “secretly carried out assignments for
the Central Intelligence Agency.”
Bernstein wrote:
“Some of these journalists’ relationships with the Agency were tacit; some were
explicit. There was cooperation, accommodation and overlap. Journalists
provided a full range of clandestine services—from simple intelligence
gathering to serving as go‑betweens with spies in Communist countries.
Reporters shared their notebooks with the CIA. Editors shared their staffs.
Some of the journalists were Pulitzer Prize winners, distinguished reporters
who considered themselves ambassadors without‑portfolio for their country. Most
were less exalted: foreign correspondents who found that their association with
the Agency helped their work; stringers and freelancers who were as interested
in the derring‑do of the spy business as in filing articles; and, the smallest
category, full‑time CIA employees masquerading as journalists abroad. In many
instances, CIA documents show, journalists were engaged to perform tasks for
the CIA with the consent of the managements of America’s leading news
organizations.”
Virtually all major US media outlets cooperated with the CIA, Bernstein
revealed, including ABC, NBC, the AP, UPI, Reuters, Newsweek, Hearst
newspapers, the Miami Herald, the Saturday Evening Post, and the New York
Herald‑Tribune.
However, he added, “By far the most valuable of these associations, according
to CIA officials, have been with the New York Times, CBS and Time Inc.”
These layers of state manipulation, censorship, and even direct crafting of the
news media show that, as much as they claim to be independent, The New York
Times and other outlets effectively serve as de facto spokespeople for the
government — or at least for the US national security state.
Ben Norton
Ben Norton is a journalist and writer. He is a reporter for The Grayzone, and
the producer of the Moderate Rebels podcast, which he co-hosts with Max
Blumenthal. His website is BenNorton.com, and he tweets at @BenjaminNorton.
